A Distributed, Multi-tiered Network Agent for Heterogeneous MANET Resource Optimization

This paper presents Ogranization and Control Proxy (OCP), a distributed network agent architecture for the optimization of heterogeneous MANET resources. OCP manages spectrum allocation/de-confliction, spatial spectrum reuse, and the dynamic setup and management of multiple heterogeneous omni and directional data links. OCP is a multi-tiered agent architecture and has been built and field-tested on multiple highly mobile military ad-hoc networks. OCP consists of a master agent with a single instantiation at each node, and multiple radio agents one for each waveform type a node has. This paper discusses the distributed agent details and an evaluation of its capabilities. Additionally, this paper describes how this distributed agent architecture creates the foundation for capabilities such as dynamic directional spectrum reuse and true heterogeneous networking.